Bruce Dowbiggin
“Meeting The Threshold”: Justin’s Tantrum Gets Justice Rouleau’s Approval
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine might say these are times that try the souls of men and women in Canada, not just Paine’s United States. Last week’s entirely predictable decision by Justice Paul Rouleau on Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergency Measures Act has now seemingly opened the way to Trudeau and future governments to remove the civil rights of those who criticize them.
Yes, Rouleau did concede that the prime minister’s vitriolic language about the Truckers had enflamed and provoked. That his unwillingness to address any competing scientific evidence (immunity/ PCR false positives/ vaccine efficiency) led to misinformation. That his shirking leadership counted on other levels of government to do his heavy lifting. That the police and media created fake news about arson and crimes the Convoy people had nothing to do with.
But he (sighing) reluctantly conceded that, all things considered, other levels of government— hint, hint: Doug Ford and the inept Ottawa police— were more culpable. See? Ford, the guy on the outside of the Family Compact, gets the blame. Here’s where Justice Rouleau put his finger on the scale to allow the PM his escape: “The (federal) Government did not have a realistic prospect of productively engaging” with those who “believed COVID-19 vaccines were part of a vast global conspiracy to depopulate the planet.”
Realistic prospect? Where did the disappearing PM try to engage? He sent in mounted police and forensic accountants to save his skin. After scolding the PM for his divisive language, Rouleau buys into Trudeau’s dystopian view of the conspiracy fanatics who would not engage with a PM who wouldn’t engage them. If this mob had wanted to invade Parliament we’d have a trucker as PM now. But they didn’t. They held back. But Rouleau gives that no credit. Only Trudeau’s blind panic has merit.
And so, Shazam, bye-bye civil rights cherished for almost 200 years in order to win the PM’s Doug Ford proxy war. Even the more aggressive Woke governments around the world were awed by how easy it all was. Made even easier by purchased media that bulleted the big takeaway in tandem. “Met the threshold”.— as Trudeau knew they would.
—Federal government met the threshold to invoke Emergencies Act: Rouleau – CBC (which speculated during the occupation that Putin was at work behind the scenes).
—Canada’s use of emergency powers during ‘Freedom Convoy’ met threshold, commissioner says – Reuters
—Trudeau’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ shutdown was justified, inquiry rules – Politico
And so Canada’s ‘summer soldier and the sunshine patriot’ escaped yet again from the standards he demands of others but not himself. Should we be surprised?
However honest Rouleau may be he is a creature of Ottawa® , marinated in its power structures and bred for the status quo of the Ontario/ Quebec nexus, trying to keep the game going a while longer. A Liberal party fixer for John Turner in the 1990s Rouleau practiced at those most sacred institutions of 514/ 613/ 416 power: Heenan/ Blaikie and Cassels/ Brock. His call to the bar has been supported by Liberal and Conservative PMs.
His sole venture outside Canada’s Eastern Time Zone corridor of power was on the Supreme Court of Yukon in 2014, Nunavut Court of Justice in 2017 and Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories in 2017. And while he laboured honestly over the task of exculpating PMJT from his worst instincts, his judgment reinforces the politics, not the legals outside the political power grid of Justin’s “otherness”. Like the SCOTUS authors who issued the Dred Scott decision in 1857 to save the U.S. from the civil war that they soon caused, Rouleau’s was more a political move than any judicial insight.
As has been noted before, justice must not simply be done, it must be seen to be done. And this patch-up job excusing another high-handed Justin episode will reverberate for generations as leaders grasp at its findings like a life preserver to crush opponents’ rights and liberties. It was a decision to send a chill down the back of any civil libertarian.
So was Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek’s recent walk across a public space in the city. A protester asked the committed progressive how she and city council can support spending $70,000 on a Drag Queen Story hour for children at city libraries.
Gondek turned to a nearby Calgary policeman and accused the protester of breaking a new law prohibiting yelling at city politicians and suits. The cop responded by issuing the protester a ticket for $500. Gondek then strode away triumphantly, assured that while free speech is trampled she and her fellow council members have a safe space anywhere they go in public, far from the madding crowd.
No surprise, as the first woman mayor of Calgary has a PhD in urban sociology which “furnishes understanding of the complex as well as profound meaning of every urban reality, notably the territorial stabilization of social life, the rise of a space symbol system and culture, and the origin and evolution of human settlements.”
Her grad-school word salad is just another tiny step in the progressives’ march against “disinformation, misinformation and distortions”, ie. anything that contradicts the WEF narratives of the day. Ones that judges like Rouleau will defend. We can only hope that someone tests this cavalier test of city council’s Woke sensibilities at as higher level.
It’s a clear sign to those who don’t bother to vote in civic elections of the mischief that fluff-heads like Gondek can get up to. Her platform since winning the mayoralty? Day One she declared a climate emergency in Calgary, the conventional energy capital of Canada. Cost: $250K. Next, she scotched the arena deal with Calgary Flames over solar panels. Officials are still trying to undo that snarl. Her current obsessions are leaf blowers, gentrifying the Stephen Street mall and begging for ESG cuddles.
Gondek’s mayoralty is a prime argument for preferential balloting. While garnering almost all the lefty votes she still failed to win 50 percent of the total vote. However, three opponents split the centre/ right vote (disclosure: one is a personal friend of Usual Suspects) that would have easily won the election had the trio settled on one opponent for Gondek.
As we’ve seen in the CPC vote and elsewhere, preferential balloting delivers a more nuanced result that better reflects the voters’ preferences. Had there been preferential balloting at Calgary city hall it’s likely Gondek would be free to walk unmolested around the city as defeated mayoralty candidate. Which is more freedom that she wishes on her protesters and the Trucker Convoys.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Breaking: Drs. Bonnie Henry and Theresa Tam have been appointed to the Order of Canada in recognition of their role in the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And so the game of covid liar’s poker has more winners. It’s like awarding the captain of the Titanic the Nobel Prize for his work on floatation. As we now know these two— and the other WHO finger puppets in Canada— made the Covid 19 episode worse, not better, with their prescription for panic, positives and punishment. Even as they knew the truth about the limits of the virus and the efficacy of vaccines they continued to spew fallacious PCR data on the extent of the sickness and who was at risk.
Put simply, to protect vulnerable seniors they said kids were also at great risk. Which was unconscionable.
In this they encouraged Justin Trudeau in his worst instincts, combining his father’s insouciant disregard for civil rights (sending in the police) with his mother’s mental stability. Propped up by Team Tam and its U.S. allies such as Anthony Fauci, this hysteria peaked with a sequestered PM crushing the Truckers Convoy’s vaccine protest with emergency measures and destruction of civil liberties.
Lest you wonder, this overreach was recognized at the time. Justice Maclean wrote at the trial of Convoy organizers, “Defendants & other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful & safe protest”. On Feb. 16, he continued a no-honking order, again writing: “Defendants & other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful & safe protest.”
The leaders of the Convoy, lynched by Canadian media’s phoney claims of right-wing American interference, are still fighting jail time on charges of nuisance. While violent criminals are routinely released on bail or absolved.
Justice Richard Mosley later concluded that while the convoy was a disruption of public order, it didn’t constitute a national emergency and invoking the act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility.” But in real time Team Tam made no attempts to correct the wilder misgivings about Covid (lockdowns, mandatory vaccines). Trudeau was given a hall pass. Needless to say the purchased media made things infinitely worse regurgitating these mistakes.
In short, they knew better but hid the truth. But why pick on Henry and Tam? Under Trudeau and his wingman Jagmeet Singh this was the golden age of lies and prevarications in Canada and the U.S. No apologies were ever offered when the truth emerged.
As we’ve noted before, Trudeau cried with a teddy bear carefully positioned over 751 alleged unmarked graves in a known Catholic cemetery that the local Cowessess band abandoned. The Liberal government knew the claim of 215 “children’s graves” was false, and still ran with it to get Trudeau his photo-op. Naturally the CBC Media Party played (and still plays) accomplice in this farce as the Canadian flag was lowered to half-mast for six months and Trudeau ratted out Canada at the UN as a genocidal state.
There were more, plenty more Trudeau scandals that media endorsed and then stood by even as the truth was revealed. SNC Lavalin. We Charity. Arrive Can app. Firing indigenous justice minister. Chinese drug infiltration/ money laundering. Nazi Celebrated in Parliament. Welcome To Canada immigration. Nova Scotia massacre. McKinsey Consultation. Blackface. And so on.
And were there apologies when it came time to make the Trudeau Liberals accountable? No, they staged a media circus over Donald Trump’s assertion of 51st state. All the fake news and deliberate lies went poof, allowing Mark Carney to seamlessly assume the PM job.
Lest We Forget Pt. 2 it was not exclusive to Canada. As we are now learning: Barack Obama and Joe Biden sat in an August 3, 2016 Situation Room briefing and said, yeah, let the highest officials in our administration fabricate evidence to frame the opposing party candidate Donald Trump. Obama. Biden. Comey. McCabe. Strzok. Page. Rice. Etc.
Knowingly using the faked Clinton campaign ‘Steele Dossier’ hoax, they launched a federal investigation into the Trump presidential campaign that lasted three years after Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 45th President. Arresting and jailing his partners and colleagues. Inventing fake stories for their media enablers. Let’s repeat that. Saint Obama knew there was criminal activity in the process but let his henchmen try to fix an election.
And when the ruse was uncovered no one apologized. No one in authority was fired or jailed. The Pulitzer Prizes awarded to the NT Times and Washington Post for disseminating the DEMs scandal were not rescinded. Nor were they given back by the lying newspapers.
The concerted frauds of the same U.S. DOJ, FBI and State Departments were fed by media and accepted by gullible publics in Canada and America. The fantastical 2020 election results were likewise drummed into the public irrespective of the sudden “appearance” of 27 million new votes during a pandemic.
It was all a fitting preamble to the 2020-2024 Biden senility scandal with Democrats running a man they knew was in full dementia. In the 2020 election Biden was hidden from public view, the better to let media attack Trump for spurious charges launched by partisan DNC attorneys in Georgia, New York and DC. Even then it took the suppression of Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop just prior to the election to get his father elected.
The dance of denial continued in Biden’s term as he physically and mentally deteriorated before the American public. But inquiries about who was running the government if not Biden were harshly suppressed. Media lackeys noted he was sharp as a tack mentally and in tip-top physical condition when he wasn’t falling down stairs.
It took the stunning 2024 debate debacle with Trump to strip away the lies about Biden’s health, now said to be advanced prostate cancer and Parkinson’s. The media, caught in their own lies about Biden’s condition, offered no apologies and tried to blame Biden’s stutter for the performance.. Right.
These were the two greatest U.S. hoaxes from people who’d cried hoax incessantly. They were hardly the only abuse of public trust. Some of the perpetrators are said to now be under investigation— even as they hand out awards to each other. The media’s credibility is shattered and yet they still blame others. Jaded voters are taking a “we’ll see” approach. But expectations of any change in DC or Ottawa are limited.
As Stephen Taylor posted on X: “Turns out for Liberals, ‘elbows up’ just means ‘noses up’ like it always has.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
This past week has seen (some) Canadians celebrating their heritage— now that Mike Myers has officially reinterpreted Canadian culture as a hockey sweater and Mr. Dressup. This quick-change was so popular that Canadian voters even forgot an entire decade of Justin Trudeau.
In the United States, the people who elected Donald Trump– and not Andrew Coyne– to run their nation celebrated Independence Day with stirring renditions off The Star Spangled Banner, although few could surpass the brilliant performance of the song by the late Whitney Houston at the 1991 Super Bowl.
The CDN equivalent is some flavour of the month changing the words to O Canada at the Grey Cup game. Canada’s national anthem has always been open to interpretation by people who may or may not have Canada in their hearts. At the 2023 NBA All Star Game Canadian chanteuse Jully Black became the latest singer to attempt a manicure to the English lyrics of O Canada, penned for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony ( Calixa Lavallée composed the music, after which words were written by the poet and judge Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The English lyrics have “evolved” over the years, just like the dress code for the CDN PM..)
Black amended the first line from “our home and native land” to our home ON native land”. Because something-something. But this creative license is nothing new. Unlike Chris Stapleton, Marvin Gaye or Whitney Houston with the Star Spangled Banner, interpreters of O Canada have seen fit to amend the lyrics to their sensibilities. Roger Doucet, famed anthem singer of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970-80s, tried to add the words “we stand on guard for truth and liberty” in place of the first “we stand on guard for thee”.
In 1990, having nothing better to do, Toronto City Council voted 12 to 7 in favour of recommending that the phrase “our home and native land” be changed to “our home and cherished land” and that “in all thy sons command” be partly reverted to “in all of us command”. (The latter was officially adapted.)
While those attempts had mixed outcomes it appears it’s just a matter of time till Ms. Black’s class-conscious culling of the words is accepted. Being generous we here at IDLM thought we’d short-circuit piecemeal attempts to create a throughly Woke version of the anthem that would last till the latest fad come along. Herewith our 2023 definitive O Canada that even— maybe only— Justin Trudeau could love:
“O Canada” (Ignores the French fact in our culture) Change to “Eau Canada”
“Our home on native land” (ignores indigenous land claims) Change to “Get off our land, settlers”
“True patriot love in all of us commands” (Only true patriot love? There were officially 78 kinds of relationships in Trudeaupia. And commanding love?) Change to “Love the one you’re with”.
“With glowing hearts we see thee rise” (rise suggests triumph of white triumphalist dogma) Change to “Non judgementally we oppose the crushing impacts of Euro-based autocracy”
“The true north strong and free” (How can anyone be strong or free when we support America’s killing fields?) Change to “Heteronormative thinking must be stamped out at our borders. If we even have borders anymore.”
“From far and wide” (Body shaming) Change to “Obesity is a disease that is not helped by putting it in the national anthem.”
“O Canada” (biased against A, B, AB blood types) change to “Science Must Be Believed”
“We stand on guard for thee” (Spreads hate against the non ableist community) Change to “Please remain seated.”
“God keep our land” (God? God? What is this, the Reformation) “Change to “It’s your thing”
”Glorious and free” (Glorious harkens to the bourgeois subjugation of Indigenous thought processes by white Christian priests) Change to “A genocidal state if there ever was one”.
“O Canada we stand on guard for thee/
O Canada we stand on guard for thee” The denial of trans rights is used twice here to emphasize the intolerable burdens faced by people of the LGBTQ2R community as they seek respect and compensation for the evils of the founding oppressors.) Change to “Eau Canada, after 6.5 hours of intensive lectures on the gender, race and dissociative application of class war on your citizens you may someday come to understand that this song is a manifestation of your bigotry and exploitation of minorities— and why rhyming lines like “thee and free” is the work of the devil or J.K. Rowling, whomever comes to mind first.”
There. That wasn’t so tough, was it? Flows trippingly off the tongue like Mark Carney refusing a special inquiry into China buying the electoral process. Or perhaps we should simply accept a literal translation of the original French lyrics:
“O Canada!
Land of our ancestors
Glorious deeds circle your brow
For your arm knows how to wield the sword
Your arm knows how to carry the cross;
Your history is an epic
Of brilliant deeds
And your valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights.”
Yikes. That’s downright fascistic. But it’s Quebec, and we have to allow them their peccadilloes. So circle your brow with glorious deeds, grab a cross and a sword and valour steeped in faith. And remember we must be adaptable in the new era.
Unless it’s Alberta using the adapting to fuel its CO2-belching machines. In which case it’s man the battlements and follow Mike Myers into the fight.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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